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Sere81
Contributor
Contributor

Recover a deleted VM

​Long story short, I deleted a VM in ESXi 6.5. I was being careless I know. I didn't have any backups or snapshots locally.(I know, I've learned my lesson) And I've somehow lost the cloud backup encryption key that I had.

I need it back as there are personal files on there that are very important to recover. ​ ​The deleted VM was in a 2 disk raid 1 array with the HDs formatted to VMFS.

If anyone could provide some help it would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance

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9 Replies
mplaksin
Contributor
Contributor

But... did you delete the VM from disk, or from inventory?

Thanks

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Sere81
Contributor
Contributor

From the inventory.

I‘m 99% sure it isn’t showing up in my datastore browser anymore. But I shut the whole server down with a quickness once I realized what i had done.

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diegodco31
Leadership
Leadership

Connect by SSH on server.

Find the localization of vm paste.

If the content of the VM, open console WEB and register the VM.

But... did you delete the VM from disk,only backup. Sorry

Diego Oliveira
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/dcodiego
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Sere81
Contributor
Contributor

Can elaborate a little bit? I know how to ssh into the server but what steps do i Need to take aftet that?

thanks

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diegodco31
Leadership
Leadership

Step to step:

cd /vmfs/volumes/<datastore>

ls -la

Verify that the VM folder

Diego Oliveira
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/dcodiego
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Sere81
Contributor
Contributor

i appreciate you trying to help, but I’m still drawing a blank with what I’m supposed to do.

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wila
Immortal
Immortal

Hi,

Wait for continuum​ to help or contact him on skype (sanbarrow)

If there's somebody roaming these forums who might be able to help you recover your VM it is Ulli.

--

Wil

| Author of Vimalin. The virtual machine Backup app for VMware Fusion, VMware Workstation and Player |
| More info at vimalin.com | Twitter @wilva
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TwinTurboRob
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Your probably going to need to take the disks fully offline(so they don't get any data written to them), then mount RO under a Linux boot disk like UltimateBoot CD and use something like "photorec" to search the drives for the deleted files.

Rob

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continuum
Immortal
Immortal

Photorec is a tool that can recover files based based on the signature of the filetype / extension.

VMDKs liked used with ESXi do not have a unique signature so there is no straight forward way to recover them with photorec.

Photorec can be useful to recover Workstation vmdks on a Windows- or Linux-host.


________________________________________________
Do you need support with a VMFS recovery problem ? - send a message via skype "sanbarrow"
I do not support Workstation 16 at this time ...

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